[HN Gopher] BioTerrorism Will Save Your Life with the 4 Thieves ...
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BioTerrorism Will Save Your Life with the 4 Thieves Vinegar
Collective [video]
Author : doener
Score : 131 points
Date : 2024-12-29 09:47 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (media.ccc.de)
(TXT) w3m dump (media.ccc.de)
| aszantu wrote:
| Thanks! Will look into it later!
| ZYbCRq22HbJ2y7 wrote:
| A few of many related past discussions:
|
| - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41474080
|
| - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17629436
|
| - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15467379
|
| - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29807454
|
| - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27661637
| dennis_jeeves2 wrote:
| I like the spirit of what they are doing.
| Metacelsus wrote:
| https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/anarchist-drugs-ag...
|
| >"Our ultimate hope is to get to a point where we're no longer
| necessary because the notion of DIY medicine, no matter anybody's
| opinion of it is common enough that if it comes up in
| conversation, someone can say 'Oh I'm just going to 3D print a
| replacement'".
|
| >No, no, that is not going to be happening any time soon, or
| (frankly) at all. I could go one for another couple of thousand
| words about why that is, about solvents, waste disposal,
| availability of starting materials, purification, analytical
| data, formulations, particle size, excipients, and plenty of
| other topics that complicate that vision enormously. But really,
| why bother? The people who believe this stuff when they hear it
| will not be persuaded, because I'm obviously a Big Pharma Shill.
| Perhaps it will be worthwhile to just note that anyone who
| actually knows about drug synthesis and manufacture just rolls
| their eyes when this sort of thing comes up, rather than shaking
| with fear that their livelihood is under attack. It's like saying
| that you're going to make your own aluminum foil.
|
| >But I'm sure that no matter what, Four Thieves will continue to
| make a big noise at biohacker events and the like, giving
| exciting presentations about how they're changing the world. But
| it's all. . .a joke. A show. Performance art. A cartoon. I hope
| they're enjoying themselves.
| borski wrote:
| This is a tone-deaf response that essentially boils down to
| "they're small and it still isn't trivial to do, so they don't
| matter."
|
| This reminds me very much of the comments on HN when Dropbox
| first launched, swearing that nobody would ever need it because
| everyone can just do what they've already always done.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| It's the opposite of the Dropbox comment, which asserted it
| was already easy to do. This criticism asserts it's too hard.
| borski wrote:
| Sorry, the implication was that it's "easy to do" insofar
| as simply getting it from a pharma manufacturer.
|
| The problem is getting the drugs you need is _not_ easy to
| do, and while 4 thieves isn't "easy" yet, it actually is
| way easier than arguing with insurance, needing a PA,
| getting a letter of medical necessity, only to still get
| rejected, and then having to argue with your state
| insurance board through an IMR.
|
| That's what I meant. All it takes is one or a few people to
| start doing this for friends, and it begins to spread.
|
| And that says nothing of when Shkreli or anyone else jacks
| up the price of an important life-saving medication simply
| because, well, they can.
| astrange wrote:
| > All it takes is one or a few people to start doing this
| for friends, and it begins to spread.
|
| Has this in fact happened?
|
| If the drugs are "actually" cheap and easy to make, I
| suggest importing them from India. If they aren't
| "actually" easy to make, you aren't going to successfully
| make them.
| borski wrote:
| Yes, it has. Abortion access is one example.
| HarryHirsch wrote:
| Regular people would buy their mifepristone from across
| the border, in Mexico or ask a friendly Mexican. That's
| the correct way of hacking the system, not that kind of
| circus show.
|
| That said, one wishes that you hadn't dragged abortion
| in, they use it to derail the discussion around universal
| medical care. Hey, you can't afford the dentist, but at
| least we fight for abortion.
| borski wrote:
| Perhaps, consider, that there may be more than one way to
| skin a cat.
| emmelaich wrote:
| A bit of googling tells me that over 2/3rds of USA states
| allow mifepristone. And the Supreme Court unanimously
| rejected an effort to restrict access to it earlier this
| year.
| 0xcde4c3db wrote:
| I get the snark on the technical merits, but saying that Four
| Thieves is just a joke is sort of like saying that Luigi
| Mangione is just a murderer. The reason that they have such
| notoriety is that countless people are deeply disappointed and
| frustrated by the state of the systems that they're lashing out
| against. It's arguably a cousin to the Silicon Valley
| "disruption" mindset: playing by the rules has only made things
| stagnant (if not worse), so the new heroes are the ones who
| make their own rules.
| hooverd wrote:
| Personally, I find this guy to be unbearably smug.
| fl0id wrote:
| This. And it's partially not even true. They clearly did
| create a lot of resources, that they present on their website
| and GitHub. Is everybody printing their own meds at home yet?
| No, and I get that the people might be offputting if they
| react quite confident but they can still do very good and
| very valuable work.
| motohagiography wrote:
| Is the 4thieves content specifically wrong? I would rather take
| some risk with some autonomy than be subject to dealing with
| the sort of people I have encountered in the drugs and illness
| business, like said author.
|
| hacking is a way to provide dignity to people in how they
| relate to systems. be warey of the ones who object to that.
| tqi wrote:
| Are you going to dispose of your waste responsibily, or are
| you going to just dismiss local regulations as "infringements
| of your freedom" and dump it down the drain? Are you going to
| make sure your manufacturing processes don't create problems
| for your neighbors, or are you just going to say "screw them,
| it's my house" and be on your merry way?
| fullspectrumdev wrote:
| Funnily, responsible waste management has been an
| _extremely_ well covered topic in a lot of the DIY science
| /chemistry forums over the years.
|
| It's even come up regularly on YouTube channels like
| NileRed/NileBlue - he has a couple of videos on processing
| wastes/cleanup work done after a reaction.
| georgeburdell wrote:
| I'm put off by their website. It seems too well crafted for their
| main focus to be on their stated goal of giving individuals the
| tools to treat themselves. The actual aim seems closer to
| marketing or perhaps influencing public discourse on the subject
|
| https://fourthievesvinegar.org/
| saagarjha wrote:
| ...which would be one way of giving individuals those tools,
| no?
| mandmandam wrote:
| I would imagine that there are many designers out there who
| would be very happy to contribute to a project like this on a
| volunteer basis.
|
| Also, purposely making your website look less "well crafted"
| strikes me as quite cynical (and almost certainly
| counterproductive).
|
| > The actual aim seems closer to marketing or perhaps
| influencing public discourse on the subject
|
| A worthy aim, no?
|
| ... How much do giant drug corps spend on marketing? Last I
| remember, it was more than they spend on drug development; in
| the _tens of billions_ of dollars annually. In this context,
| quibbling that a website seems too nice seems remarkably
| misguided.
|
| Finally, considering how much effort has been put into helping
| people actually make these things - far more than anyone else!
| - I think trying to redefine their aim to be just marketing is
| deeply unfair.
| Hasu wrote:
| > It seems too well crafted for their main focus to be on their
| stated goal of giving individuals the tools to treat
| themselves.
|
| Is this how you think about everything? Do you go to a
| restaurant with nice chairs and think, "The food here must
| suck, they spend too much money on the furniture"?
| georgeburdell wrote:
| When it's a small operation, yes I get suspicious that
| they're not focusing on their stated mission with their
| limited resources. Also, ambience is part of the sensory
| pleasure of a restaurant.
| Dilettante_ wrote:
| Hell yeah, you know the best food comes from the dingiest
| joints
| noxer wrote:
| They do the whole warrant canary completely wrong tho.
| gcr wrote:
| I'd argue that the political message is indivisible from the
| information-giving message in this case. Most of the groups
| doing this are in the business because they have a distrust for
| authority, desire to help community, etc. Shouldn't we expect
| their messaging to be a little on the anarchist or libertarian
| side?
| HarryHirsch wrote:
| The whole show feels like the financial literacy courses that are
| being offered by credit card companies. The system is stacked
| against the individual, we need to keep the notion of "personal
| responsibility" alive. Do we want this future:
| https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/26/world/americas/mexican-ca...
|
| I know people who cook their own medicine, but they are trained
| as chemists or microbiologists and have access to lab facilities.
| If Joe Sixpack stated doing his own, it'd look like so:
| https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/26/world/americas/mexican-ca...
|
| We know that niche stuff like Daraprim or trientine is easy to
| produce because it used to be cheap before the financializers got
| there. I'm not yet convinced that the solution is to cook your
| own, one should lean on the government to have a national
| facility.
| portaouflop wrote:
| I'm not an US citizen but it seems that people in the US just
| die because they don't get the medicine they need to juice up
| profits. I'm sure the coming gov won't improve that. In that
| situation I can empathise with people who "cook their own". I
| am sure you would do the same if the alternative is agonising
| slow death.
|
| There are many countries - for example Cuba - that can't rely
| on these systems - they need to cook their own.
|
| Is your proposal to rely on the government really realistic in
| those scenarios?
| bdndndndbve wrote:
| It takes a diversity of tactics to overcome an adversary as
| entrenched as the pharmaceutical industry. I don't believe in
| their wild "one day everyone will manufacture their own
| medication" BS, but it's valuable to keep this knowledge in the
| public consciousness. If for no other reason to remind us that
| Big Pharma is gouging patients for life-saving drugs that are
| cheap and simple to manufacture.
| HarryHirsch wrote:
| With certain niche medications like trientine it used to be a
| small manufacturer, the scale of a man with a garage, who had
| the FDA registration and sold the stuff for a price that
| allowed him to make a living. That worked fine, until
| investment banking got there, and raised the price to
| whatever the market would bear.
|
| Those days are gone, like the old web. Not sure, if the DIY
| movement can put enough pressure on the drug cartel to drop
| prices. Then again, university librarians had been
| complaining about Elsevier since the 1990's, but nothing got
| done until Sci-Hub appeared. That's the hammer argument
| against _Crito_.
| 8bitbeep wrote:
| > We all know that custom, hand-made, artisan-crafted, boutique
| tools are always better than something factory made.
|
| Right. We all know the best chips in the world are made by local
| artisan silicon-etchers. None of that TSMC pasteurized crap. You
| simply can't beat a 1nm brush and a steady hand. We all know this
| industrial revolution thing was a mistake.
| portaouflop wrote:
| Sure if you apply enough mental gymnastics you can invalidate
| any claim.
|
| Good faith reading of his argument would be that a custom,
| artisan crafted hammer is better than a factory made one. I
| can't say if that is true or not but using chips as an example-
| probably the most complex man made thing- is bad faith
| argumentation
| NeutralCrane wrote:
| Given that the application here is molecular chemistry aimed
| at targeting human biology, one of the few problems equally
| complex as computer chips, I would say their analogy is far
| more appropriate than a _hammer_.
| fumeux_fume wrote:
| That specific sentence is making an analogy using handmade
| tools. A hammer is an ideal example of a tool. You would
| expect to find a hammer in a toolbox. A computer chip is
| not an ideal example of a tool. You would not expect to
| find a computer chip in a toolbox.
| fragmede wrote:
| Laser level, boroscope, camera stud-finder, thermal
| camera, laser tape measure, multimeter, battery
| management system on a lithum-something battery pack for
| power tools; those are all gonna have IC chips in them
| and it wouldn't be unreasonable to find them in a
| professional's toolbox.
| portaouflop wrote:
| Creating a medicine such as the ones mentioned in the talk
| is FAR more simple than creating microchips - as a starter
| you don't need a billion dollar worth clean room and
| equipment as they clearly demonstrate.
|
| So yea human biology is as complex if not more complex I
| agree - creating medicine after a proven recipe is not.
| timon999 wrote:
| If someone claims that X is "always"(!) the case, then giving
| just one example where X is not the case counts as a
| refutation. The statement that the GP quoted is just
| obviously false and there is nothing "bad faith" about
| pointing that out.
| mistermann wrote:
| One some topics this is realized and praised on HN.
|
| On other topics, the cognition flips.
|
| This is the nature of evolved, culturally conditioned
| consciousness (one of the things most HN'ers like talking
| about from an abstract perspective, but _really_ don 't
| like talking about at the object level during discussions
| of certain controversial ideas, when heuristics have taken
| control of the mind).
|
| For fun: observe the nature of comments in this thread from
| a meta perspective of a curious alien observer.
| fragmede wrote:
| Most of the people here aren't biochemists, hence q
| "biochemistry = scary untouchable magic" POV. But for
| those that have done the chemistry in a university
| setting before and gone on to being professionals in the
| field, know the plant-based history of the field, as well
| as the history of synthesizing "stuff" and ingesting it,
| by certain individuals in the field.
|
| it's important to get the chemistry right, but if you
| know the failure modes, it's far less of a black box and
| thus less scary.
| wlesieutre wrote:
| There's not even much argument for it being true in _most_
| cases.
|
| Artisan made tools compared to _high end_ tools from a
| factory are more like a mechanical watch compared to an
| electronic one. It might be a cool mechanism and a more
| unique statement piece than an Apple Watch, but it sure
| won't keep better time.
| portaouflop wrote:
| The question if there is such a thing as "truth" (an
| universally true statement) is probably the hardest
| philosophical problem in humanities history- of course that
| is not what we were discussing and for that reason your
| argument here is also in bad faith
| timon999 wrote:
| I don't see why the nature of truth is relevant here,
| unless you are claiming that we can't make deductive
| arguments about anything ever (I never used the word
| "truth" in my comment anyway). Also, constant accusations
| of "bad faith", i.e. dishonesty, are poor debate
| etiquette and just give the impression that you have no
| point to make on the object level.
| mistermann wrote:
| Live by the sword die by the sword.
| cess11 wrote:
| It's a good day to die.
| namuol wrote:
| I don't think this analogy resonates particularly well with the
| drug manufacturing process.
|
| I would think in general the bulk of the expense of a drug
| comes from its R&D, not manufacture. The cost of manufacture
| probably varies wildly (with the most expensive being bespoke
| treatments), but as the talk shows, there have been many
| examples where a (relatively) simple-to-manufacture drug is
| kept from those who need it due to prices that do not reflect
| the cost of manufacture.
|
| Will most drugs be easy to make at home? Probably not, but
| enough probably can be that I wouldn't dismiss the idea because
| of some rhetorical overreach.
| 8bitbeep wrote:
| True, it's just that the original quote is hard swallow. Try
| melting sand and polishing your own lenses and compare that
| to a US$ 5 glass.
| bsder wrote:
| > Will most drugs be easy to make at home? Probably not, but
| enough probably can be that I wouldn't dismiss the idea
| because of some rhetorical overreach.
|
| Ever watch a non-chef bake a cake? If you have, that
| experience should give you _great_ concern about people
| playing with drug recipes.
|
| In addition, most drugs do not have a "nice" synthesis that
| doesn't leave a whole bunch of glop in the afterproducts.
| Distilling alcohol is about as easy as it gets and yet people
| wind up poisoned from homemade hooch all the time.
| miki123211 wrote:
| > I would think in general the bulk of the expense of a drug
| comes from its R&D
|
| Not just its R&D, but also the R&D of the 10 other drugs
| which looked promising, had a lot of money invested in them,
| but didn't end up working out in the end.
|
| You could very easily pass a law invalidating all drug
| patents, and making generics for any drug easily available.
| This would make all drug prices go down drastically. It would
| definitely work, there's no question about it. The anti-
| capitalists are very much right about this.
|
| What they're missing, though, is that this law would
| completely remove the incentive to make any new drugs. The
| progress of medicine would instantly slow down to a halt. All
| existing drugs would be very close to free, but all
| currently-uncured illnesses would forever stay uncured.
| ben_w wrote:
| > All existing drugs would be very close to free, but all
| currently-uncured illnesses would forever stay uncured.
|
| Unless there's government funding.
|
| Also consider that for both patents and government funding,
| there are other jurisdictions which won't do what your
| government does, so there's a Nash equilibrium problem
| where every country has people who want to defect (delete
| patents) to get free stuff whose research was paid for by
| the profit margin in the jurisdiction which keeps the
| patents.
| toast0 wrote:
| Sounds like my artisinal Certificate Authority, all signatures
| are hand multiplied by human computers!
| barfolomew wrote:
| Jesse, we need to cook.
| Aurornis wrote:
| A lot of people miss the fact that this is more art project than
| practical solution. It's meant to make a statement, but they have
| cherry-picked some extremely simple drugs to synthesize to make
| their point.
|
| I have some online friends who met through a forum for their rare
| condition. The forum they're in had a splinter group dedicated to
| getting companies in China to synthesize experimental drugs for
| them that they couldn't secure through normal channels, either
| because they hadn't been approved yet or because they were
| expensive and off-label so nobody would even prescribe them.
|
| Even contracting with professional chemical synthesis operations
| in foreign countries turned out to be more difficult than they
| imagined. Several companies would take their deposit, then refund
| part of it after several months because they could never get the
| synthesis to work properly. They received one batch that tested
| as being so impure that it was useless.
|
| Projects like this convince people that all drugs are actually
| really easy to make, when in reality this project has carefully
| selected the most simple examples to make that misleading point.
| germandiago wrote:
| The story probably has two sides, as you mention.
|
| However, I think everyone should be in charge of their own
| decisions, including taking not approved drugs, without being
| considered criminals or similar, under their strict own
| responsibility.
| abduhl wrote:
| This question is pedantic but I'll ask it anyways: is it
| actually illegal to take an unapproved drug? Sale of,
| marketing for, distribution, etc. all might be (are?) illegal
| but is TAKING an unapproved drug illegal? I can't believe it
| is, there's an entire industry that peddles nootropics and
| supplements. My understanding has always been that if you can
| get it (however that is), you can take it without issue
| (although you obviously might have broken a possession law at
| some point).
| soulofmischief wrote:
| Depending on the drug, it can be illegal for certain
| professionals to create, procure or otherwise transfer
| possession or sell it to you. It's not even illegal to
| consume heroin or crack in normal circumstances, it's only
| the possession itself which is illegal.
|
| Depends on the state, but unscheduled drugs don't typically
| have possession laws. However, if you use an illegal method
| to acquire them, and in some case all realistic methods are
| illegal, you can get in trouble for that.
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| Isn't the FDAs rule it becomes controlled once the active
| ingredient in the supplement is proven to have significant
| pharmacological effects on health conditions? So you can
| take it up to and until it becomes clear it has a benefit
| to you, the you can only take the FDA approved version.
| mistermann wrote:
| >when in reality this project has carefully selected the most
| simple examples to make that misleading point.
|
| Can you quote that part?
| snakeyjake wrote:
| >Projects like this convince people that all drugs are actually
| really easy to make, when in reality this project has carefully
| selected the most simple examples to make that misleading
| point.
|
| For the last thirty or so years ccc has mainly been a place for
| people to lie or exaggerate on stage in order to promote their
| security consulting firm or other freelance project.
|
| So this is to be expected.
|
| If replication in psychology is a crisis, the replication of
| results from hacker conference talks is an extinction-level
| apocalypse.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| ok but the opposite is also annoying.. where professionals
| make tiny, safe comments, and their management never
| discloses at all..
|
| SO you get a nightclub environment like a stage.. let them do
| it, obviously useful things come out sometimes.
| fullspectrumdev wrote:
| Contacts for _reliable_ contract synthesis labs in China are
| kind of a closely held secret.
|
| Before the 2017 "general ban" on psychoactive substances in the
| UK there was a thriving industry where "entrepreneurs" with the
| contacts for such labs would hire chemists to find them a new
| candidate analogue/derivative of say, a stimulant or
| hallucinogen or whatever, knock together a synthesis route, see
| if it works, and then have it manufactured in bulk for resale
| to head shops.
|
| A small number of people got incredibly rich off this, some got
| busted when their product got banned and they didn't dump the
| stock fast enough, but most made fucking phenomenal amounts of
| money.
|
| The same "trade" carries on in some other European countries to
| this day, with "new" LSD derivatives cropping up every few
| months when one is invariably banned.
|
| I vaguely recall there was even a few articles about this whole
| thing back in the day by some journalists, maybe at Vice or
| something? They had an interview with one of the chemists.
| iancmceachern wrote:
| Maybe Hamiltons Pharmacopeia?
| Telemakhos wrote:
| Perhaps NPR: https://www.npr.org/2020/11/17/916890880/we-are-
| shipping-to-... ('We Are Shipping To The U.S.': Inside
| China's Online Synthetic Drug Networks, 2020)
|
| Perhaps NYT:
| https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/22/world/asia/in-china-
| illeg... (In China, Illegal Drugs Are Sold Online in an
| Unbridled Market, 2015)
| delecti wrote:
| > they have cherry-picked some extremely simple drugs to
| synthesize to make their point
|
| It can't do _everything_ , but those cherry-picked examples are
| still pretty dramatic. Saving $80k to cure your Hep.C is pretty
| practical. Getting an abortion while living under increasingly
| emboldened christofascists is pretty practical. Managing your
| own transgender HRT is pretty practical. Lets not perfect be
| the enemy of good, it's a pretty solid start.
| righthand wrote:
| This but with cleaning products and beauty products. People
| should be empowered to clean their living environment without
| buying tubs and tubs of plastic. Electrolyzed water should be
| bigger.
| nozzlegear wrote:
| I'm reminded of the King of the Hill episode where Peggy
| publishes advice in her newspaper column telling her readers to
| mix ammonia and bleach for better cleaning, not realizing it
| creates toxic chloramine gas.
| daveguy wrote:
| I guess they're not so concerned with the "oops, poison" aspect
| of manufacturing drugs. Or ethics driven testing of drugs for
| safety and efficacy. Seems like a great way to fk up and kill
| people. Also, they say compounding pharmacies are illegal, but
| they're not. Not in the US or Germany. There's one down the
| street from me and my neighbor was a compounding pharmacist.
| toss1 wrote:
| Or, as with Thalidomide, the formulation pathway also happens
| to make a 'left-handed' version of a drug which turns works
| great, but the opposite chirality causes horrible birth defects
| (as in kids with brain damage or deformed hands & feet
| basically attached to shoulders and hips, and more). [0] And
| this was with production and testing by major pharm companies.
|
| I'd be all over home production or brew-kits for users or
| compounding pharmacists to save lives or quality of life. But
| damn, the more complex synthesis pathways have potential for
| insanely serious 'bugs', and the consequences aren't just a
| software crash, they can be life-altering or life-ending. With
| fully informed consent, still works for me.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thalidomide
| spookie wrote:
| Honestly, in the EU it's quite common for pharmacies to make
| compounded drugs. At least in my country ALL pharmacies are
| required to have the equipment and staff required to do so. I
| would be surprised if it wasn't the case in others.
| gcr wrote:
| This could get super interesting with my country's political
| situation. I could see two particular groups getting into med
| production:
|
| - Pregnant women who need abortion medication
|
| - Trans people who need hormones
|
| With finasteride and puberty blockers/HRT being criminalized, a
| lot of people in the above categories are turning to black market
| / DIY solutions.
| aSanchezStern wrote:
| I was talking to a French trans academic at a conference
| recently, and apparently there is a large community of trans
| people that make their own hormones from cheap precursors you
| can buy online. All secondhand obviously so I don't know the
| details but this is definitely a thing.
| 4gotunameagain wrote:
| Ah yes, nothing screams of freedom more than brewing your
| moonshine hormones and diying an extremely serious medical
| procedure without a doctor and outside of the medical system.
|
| Gotta love the USA!
| esqui wrote:
| They don't need hormones, they choose to take them, for
| cosmetic and ideologically-driven reasons.
|
| The countries that are clamping down on puberty blockers are
| doing so to prevent indoctrinated children from obtaining drugs
| that interfere with healthy development.
| theossuary wrote:
| It's crazy how DIY HRT and puberty blockers are now necessary
| to prevent trans kids from being mutilated by going through the
| wound puberty, then having to pay tens of thousands of dollars
| for reconstructive surgeries to fix maybe a fifth the damage.
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| I've procured substantial quantities of gray market (not illegal
| yet) medication 'for research purposes' and can probably safely
| say that it has indeed saved my life. While the medication was
| purchased the protocol was of my own design. Like many people
| with chronic conditions (LongCovid/Chronic Fatigue) I've long
| given up on doctors and only use them when I have to get a
| prescription. A lot of what I used are the human encoded bio
| regulator peptides mainly studied by Prof Khavinson and largely
| ignored in the West. Bacteriophages are another interesting
| medical technique ignored by the west. These days I think GLP-1A
| (ozempic) etc also help with auto-immune conditions so I'm
| confident there will be a lot of off label use at lower doses and
| I'm sure there already is. I haven't had time to watch the video
| yet but Low Dose Naltrexone is a perfect case study of an
| effective medication dying due to lack of funding and being
| revived by patient groups. Naltrexone is a generic so there is no
| money in making it a treatment.
|
| For a few years there was a shortage of modafinil so I looked
| into making it myself. It's not too hard, totally doable. As
| technology improves it'll get even easier. Especially going from
| a low yield batch chemistry to a higher yield lab on a chip
| continuous chemistry. For more complex stuff there are micro-
| bioreactors to use recombinant DNA. It's pretty cost effective to
| send off samples for analysis. I'm not confident enough to use
| any of my own synthesized meds, at this stage it's just a hobby.
|
| Procuring a custom batch of meds from Asia can be as cheep as
| $10K so patient groups sometimes organize group buys. Because the
| turnaround is so quick and there are plenty of volunteers the
| patient groups can get results much faster than the medical
| researchers.
| ba12367fgh wrote:
| Could you please share more details on any Long Covid protocols
| you feel have been helpful?
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| Modafinil 100mg morning and Amitriptyline 75mg at night helps
| with dysautonomia, though modafinil can exacerbate gut
| issues. Using weaker ligands helps with working with the
| natural cycles of the body instead of against it. Low Dose
| Naltrexone. A fairly high dose of TUDCA and DIM. DIM
| (3,3'-Diindolylmethane) is a relatively non-toxic selective
| AhR modulator. Ipamorelin + ModGRF. VIP peptide. A fairly low
| dose Semaglutide of 0.5mg after a year on it where I started
| at 0.05mg - not sure if the dose has plateaued, we will see.
| Elimination of sugar from diet. Resistance exercise and no
| aerobic exercise due to PEM. I have a strong genetic
| predisposition (hEDS) so I was impacted by Long Covid worse
| than most.
| ba12367fgh wrote:
| Thank you so much. I've been impacted similarly. If I have
| some luck I will let you know.
|
| (I put my email in my bio, I might have some useful stuff
| too)
|
| :)
| 93po wrote:
| What is the mechanism of Naltrexone in reducing fatigue? It
| seems like fatigue and sleepiness is a common side effect.
|
| I had really high hopes for modafinil in treating my long-
| life fatigue issues as well as helping with my severe ADHD
| since I can't tolerate or access traditional stimulant
| medication for it rignt now. It was amazing for a week or
| so but quickly stopped having an effect unless I took 400mg
| a day, and the side effects of that dose were also not
| tolerable for me.
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| I think it's important to offset the modafinil effects
| with something like amitriptyline. Taking only a
| stimulant will exacerbate dysautonomia and you'll be
| fighting a losing battle against your bodies corrective
| mechanisms.
|
| Low Dose Naltrexone works differently to Naltrexone in
| that the temporary block of the opioid receptor causes a
| paradoxical natural overreaction to the absence.
|
| The mechanism of action is very complex but it appears
| that the inflammation -> neurotransmitter dysfunction
| (e.g. dopamine dysregulation)-> immune system dysfunction
| -> inflammation cycle creates a bit of a trap that people
| can get stuck in. Taking enough of the right meds on this
| cycle does appear to help people break out of that trap.
| goda90 wrote:
| I have a loved one who is struggling with drug shortages.
| Unfortunately it's a schedule 2 drug, so I'm sure attempting to
| manufacture my own would be very illegal. I wouldn't be
| surprised if we're in a transition period where the tech is
| becoming accessible, but isn't yet heavily regulated. Both the
| DEA and pharmaceutical companies have an interest in stopping
| people from making their own drugs at home.
| NeutralCrane wrote:
| While a noble cause, this seems like a prime example of "techies
| convince themselves they are smarter than everyone and they can
| solve every single problem with JavaScript". Which is why, when
| you actually look at the project, it's a website, instructions
| for a 3D printed version of the chemistry kit I bought my kid for
| Christmas for $40, several software suites all listed as "pre-
| alpha" (read: not working), and instructions for turning their
| logo into merch like stickers. This comes off more like an art
| project at best, or a garage-band version of Theranos at worst.
|
| I hate being cynical about something like this. I want there to
| be affordable health solutions for people. But this comes off so
| naive and self-aggrandizing that it makes me want to actually get
| _out_ of tech and into a field where people are more grounded.
| Something with fewer religious fanatics, God complexes, and
| delusions of grandeur.
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| > it makes me want to actually get out of tech and into a field
| where people are more grounded. Something with fewer religious
| fanatics, God complexes, and delusions of grandeur.
|
| I've been having this thought a lot lately. Do you have any
| thoughts about which field you might transition to, if you did
| this?
|
| I've been considering bioinformatics, so far the classes have
| been pretty fun, but I haven't yet gotten close enough to the
| day-to-day work to know if it's any less toxic or just toxic in
| new and unpleasant ways.
| cess11 wrote:
| The point is to make it look cool and inspire people to try to
| create new modes of production, because that's likely to be
| important in the future. It's not to replicate 'big pharma'
| capitalist production.
| HarryHirsch wrote:
| _It 's not to replicate 'big pharma' capitalist production._
|
| It's not? Elsevier finally relented when universities could
| finally cancel their subscriptions because librarians could
| direct people to Sci-Hub.
| epgui wrote:
| I've studied biochem for 12 years. FWIW, I think the level of
| dunning-kruggery here is super impressive.
| tptacek wrote:
| Recently, from Derek Lowe, on this project:
| https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/anarchist-drugs-ag...
|
| "It's like saying that you're going to make your own aluminum
| foil."
| jrflowers wrote:
| Anybody interested in taking drugs they've cooked up should
| familiarize themselves with MPTP/MPP+
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MPTP
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| That looks like yet another reason to stay the heck away from
| opiates.
| ryao wrote:
| > We all know that custom, hand-made, artisan-crafted, boutique
| tools are always better than something factory made. A guitar, a
| wood chisel, a chef's knife, a built racing engine, a firearm, a
| suit, a pair of shoes. Given that this is so well-known, and so
| universally understood, it's peculiar at best that this is not
| seen by most people when it comes to medicine. It is however also
| true.
|
| I have seen this sentiment expressed, but I have yet to see any
| real evidence for it. A factory can ensure precision and
| consistency at a level that those hand crafting things never
| could. For all of the things listed, I would rather have factory
| made versions since I know they are likely made precisely to a
| specification and deviations from that specification likely make
| things worse, rather than better.
|
| If that claim about hand made items being better were true, there
| would be a market for hand made CPUs, yet there is none, since
| hand made objects can not reach that level of precision. That is
| a major reason why society transitioned to factories for
| production in the first place.
| galleywest200 wrote:
| In regards to objects like the guitar listed in the quote,
| there is a draw to how a hand-crafted item can be _unique_ due
| to slight imperfections. This can range from just slight
| imperfections in the wood to things such as believing your
| guitar has a unique sound.
|
| Sure the factory guitar may sound "perfect", but the only
| guitar that sounds like this handmade guitar is this handmade
| guitar.
| ryao wrote:
| I would not consider that evidence for the items being
| better, but it does explain why some people are drawn to hand
| made items.
|
| I consider such items to be worse and not just because they
| are objectively worse. Items break and are lost. When you
| become emotionally attached to an object such as a unique
| imperfect guitar, you are guaranteed to have sorrow when it
| is lost (e.g. in a fire).
|
| In any case, the original premise was that such items are
| better and thus hand made medicine is better too. However,
| you do not want variations in medicine. During the pandemic,
| my doctor had a suspicion that the dosages of certain drugs
| had been lowered by the manufacturers versus what was on the
| label. That posed a problem for him because he could not
| properly treat patients if he had no clue what was actually
| in the pills filling his prescriptions. His suspicion had
| stemmed from seeing a trend among his patients where the
| efficacy was dropping in a way consistent with the dosages
| being lowered, although he was not sure by how much. If he
| had tried to compensate by prescribing larger dosages, when
| the manufacturers began to get things right again, his
| patients would have been taking overdoses. His solution was
| to switch them to alternative drugs and hope that the
| manufacturers of those drugs were producing pills that
| matched their labels. This is why precision is very important
| when it comes to medicine and the last thing anyone needs are
| imperfections in drug manufacturing.
| roughly wrote:
| > Items break and are lost. When you become emotionally
| attached to an object such as a unique imperfect guitar,
| you are guaranteed to have sorrow when it is lost (e.g. in
| a fire).
|
| Life is loss. You can't have sorrow without having
| experienced joy. Sorrow passes.
| ryao wrote:
| You can avoid this kind of loss by getting a guitar made
| from a long running factory line such that you can get an
| identical replacement.
| roughly wrote:
| You can avoid a lot of joy that way, too.
| ryao wrote:
| I do not see how. A well made guitar from a factory would
| give the same joy as a hand made one as far as I am
| concerned. Perhaps even more upon realizing imperfections
| were avoided.
| crdrost wrote:
| You two are in a battle over aesthetics, it is a battle
| that neither of you can win.
|
| There is something attractive about a new set of work
| gloves. They are fresh, clean, almost begging you to use
| them in a project.
|
| There is something attractive about a set of work gloves
| that have curled to the shape of your hands and have been
| burnished by sap and sawdusts and oils: come on old
| friend, let's remake our previous magic.
|
| There's something nice about a fleecy throw, but they are
| not as cozy as the quilts my wife made for my daughter,
| but defining that coziness will remain out of reach as
| far as my words go.
|
| No one can be correct, here. It's just what appeals more
| or less to you.
| wilsonnb3 wrote:
| Guitars are manufactured from organic material. Even
| coming off of a factory line, no two guitars are
| identical because no two pieces of wood are identical.
| ryao wrote:
| Even without organic material, no two would be alike due
| to manufacturing tolerances. Good quality control keeps
| those tolerances low enough that the differences are not
| significant or noticeable.
| jelling wrote:
| Any guitarist that places outside of the house will have no
| problem inflicting enough damage on their guitar to make it
| unique.
| wyre wrote:
| Wouldn't a better example than guitars be violins? A handmade
| violin is always going to sound better than one machinemade
| because the luthier is able to treat the wood specifcally to
| showcase the tone of the wood used.
| yinser wrote:
| You are directionally correct but the top of the line chisels
| are in fact hand made in Japan and I suspect the same for
| knives. Lee Valley and some other higher end manufacturers make
| some damn fine chisels but chisels are hand tools and I would
| guess 9/10 woodworkers who use chisels will choose hand made
| Japanese chisels over any factory manufactured tools.
| ryao wrote:
| Isn't the main thing that makes a chisel better or worse the
| material quality, such that regardless of whether it is hand
| made or factory made, the chisel made of superior material is
| better?
| roughly wrote:
| High end automated processes can indeed hit extremely high
| tolerances, but that's a trade-off on cost (give or take) and
| often not one the factory is making. I'm reminded of a story
| about GM, where the top execs would preview drive all the new
| models - except the ones that were given to the execs had been
| hand-tuned by engineers to fix the manufacturing slop, so the
| GM brass was convinced their cars were much better than they
| were.
| ryao wrote:
| I am reminded of the following story:
|
| https://www.1factory.com/quality-academy/forgotten-
| lessons.h...
|
| Ford had transmissions produced in both the US and Japan, yet
| the Japanese made transmissions had 1/4 the repair frequency.
| Their engineers disassembled them to discover why. It turned
| out that they were both within spec, but the Japanese
| transmissions had been manufactured to tighter tolerances and
| had targeted ranges in the specification that resulted in a
| better fit and superior performance.
|
| In this case, the factory had taken it upon itself to improve
| the design within the tolerances that Ford had specified.
| Tighter tolerances usually cost more, although economics of
| scale can bring the price down. Presumably that happened in
| the case of the Japanese factory. Otherwise, they would not
| have been able to produce the transmissions at the prices
| Ford paid them.
| SequoiaHope wrote:
| > A factory can ensure precision and consistency at a level
| that those hand crafting things never could.
|
| Idk, in the example "a built racecar engine" one could imagine
| that instead of running CNC machines all day long to make
| pistons, replacing tools for wear periodically, a machinist
| could take a brand new end mill, make some initial test cuts
| and validate the dimensions, then make the final part and look
| it all over with the CMM or other tools. You could, by paying
| extra attention to each part, make a more precise part than
| something being made on an assembly line where things are not
| double checked quite so meticulously, for basic efficiency
| reasons.
|
| Like I assume that by the same definition of "hand made" as the
| racecar engine, we would consider NASA rovers to be hand made.
| And they are made to a very high precision. We could consider
| whether SpaceX Engines have ever been "hand made" and how the
| quality of those relates to production engines (tho in this
| case, production engines must have rigorous validation of
| basically every component I would imagine, so the factory
| perhaps meets or could even exceed hand production runs in
| quality).
|
| But I would not say it needs to be a hard and fast rule.
| ryao wrote:
| I suspect the original author's use of "a built racing
| engine" was a bad example since there is no factory line for
| such things as they are too low volume. However, if we loosen
| the definition of racing engine to include hot rods, then I
| believe proven factory built designs are highly valued. To
| give one example:
|
| > The 2JZ-GTE, which sits in the heart of the Supra, is one
| of the best inline-six out of Japan and easily tunable to
| 500+ Hp on stock internals.
|
| https://www.drifted.com/1gz-fe/
| diggan wrote:
| > If that claim about hand made items being better were true,
| there would be a market for hand made CPUs
|
| Isn't a CPU kind of one of the most complex thing humanity has
| ever created in hardware terms? Like the scales involved are so
| different, compared to the examples of a guitar, chisel or
| knife. It requires so tiny tolerances and measurements, that I
| guess we're past it's even possible to "make a CPU by hand"
| that comes close to our current CPUs. Sure, you can always use
| old CPU designs from back in the day, but a knife today can be
| the same as it was 2000 years ago, it just has to be sharp and
| comfortable, so really hard to compare.
|
| > I have seen this sentiment expressed, but I have yet to see
| any real evidence for it.
|
| Have you gone searching for evidence? The examples being
| guitars, chisels, knifes, suit and shoes, sounds simple to
| search how the top-of-the-line stuff is made. I'd bet on that
| high quality things from those categories are in fact typically
| hand-made.
| ryao wrote:
| Nobody expressing the general sentiment of "hand made is
| intrinsically better than factory made" has been able to
| produce evidence of intrinsic superiority. The burden of
| proof is on those making such claims and evidence largely
| favors factories as producing superior products. There can be
| exceptions, but that is due to bad decisions rather than some
| intrinsic issue with the idea of a factory production line.
| roughly wrote:
| > I really don't expect to learn any differently by doing
| further research, which I expect to be a waste of my time.
|
| I guess that settles that, then.
| caconym_ wrote:
| > I would rather have factory made versions since I know they
| are likely made precisely to a specification and deviations
| from that specification likely make things worse, rather than
| better.
|
| For these items in particular, there is generally no extant
| factory automation that will get you a better result than a
| human craftsman. You'd be a fool to pick extant mass produced
| alternatives, all else being equal.
|
| A CPU is a pretty poor analogy here, since it's not only
| precision that makes handmade examples of the above items
| superior, but it's essentially the only thing that matters for
| a CPU (or something like an iPhone, etc). You likely _could_
| design a superior factory for many of those items, taking into
| account materials variance, bespoke details for individual
| customers, etc., but it would not be economical in the markets
| where these items are sold.
|
| edit: I also think these items are a bad analogy for medicine,
| where precision is paramount. So I probably agree with you
| there.
| amluto wrote:
| There are plenty of factory made shoes that have fancy
| contoured uppers that have shapes that can't really be
| achieved by hand.
| reaperman wrote:
| > a pair of shoes
|
| >> For all of the things listed, I would rather have factory
| made versions.
|
| I think people believe this who haven't ever experienced truly
| custom hand-made things. The process of creating an actual _"
| custom, hand-made, artisan-crafted, boutique"_ shoe will
| involve first creating a custom "last" - a wooden mold to build
| the shoe around.
|
| This last isn't literally a mold of your foot, it is a custom-
| sculpted shape that is specific to both your foot and the
| particular shoe style. The shoemaker will keep all of their
| customer's lasts in a large library, so once your last is
| customized properly for you (in-person), you don't have to
| return to order more of that type of shoe - you can place
| future orders in different colors/materials and the shoe will
| be created around that same wooden last, ensuring a very
| specific fit that is most comfortable for you.
|
| A factory cannot do this.
|
| The point of hand-made things is customization that goes far
| beyond what a factory could ever do. If you're buying hand-made
| things that aren't truly customized for you, then you're
| largely missing the point.
| narrator wrote:
| I imagine with advanced robotics, you'll just get the AI to
| output a synthesis and put it through your at home chem lab with
| precise pipetting and all that. It will also help clean up and
| handle any nasty reagents.
| ugjka wrote:
| I loved the talk but some kind of reds flags went off in my mind
| when he couldn't answer about heavy metal contamination but i'm
| no chemist so i have no clue either
| maeln wrote:
| Taken from the description:
|
| > Governments have criminalized the practice of managing your own
| health. Despite the fact that for most of human history bodily
| autonomy, and self-managed health was the norm, it is now
| required that most aspects of your health must be mediated by an
| institution deputized by the state. Taking those rights back for
| yourself is then labeled "BioTerrorism". So be it. Let's learn
| how.
|
| This is, in most country, false. You can absolutely decide on
| your own to mix up some chemical and then take it (you might just
| be held accountable for the result, i.e, not coverage from your
| health insurance). There is some exception related to the
| consumption of narcotics, but, what most law, not government (its
| an important distinction in a democracy), make illegal is the
| distribution (and the intent of) of drugs without the proper
| licence. And there is very, very good reasons for it. Drugs are
| no joke. Some ingredients needs to be very precisely dosed, at
| very low concentration, requiring special tooling and precaution,
| or you might reach a toxic dosage very, very quickly and kill
| someone (or permanently damage some organs). Then, there is the
| issue of quack doctor and quack medicine. While the current
| system is far from perfect (see: the opioid crisis in the US), it
| still give legal repercussion for people who sale snake oil,
| potentialy dangerous ones, and who prey on already often
| desperate victim.
|
| The other thing is, the law also prevent buying some chemical
| without the proper licence. And again, there is usually good
| reasons for it. Either because they make it easy to synthetise
| drugs that society has judged detrimental (again, narcotics like
| meth, heroin, ...), or because they make explosives (wasn't it
| sulfuric acid that could turn a lot of stuff into energetics ?).
|
| And for the most part, theses laws where written in blood. We can
| debate the specifics of their implementations (the war on drugs,
| the free access to birth control, how to allow for
| experimentation, ...), but the overall spirit of those laws is, I
| believe, sadly very needed in our current world.
|
| Obviously there is also the patent issue, but it's a whole lot of
| debate in itself.
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| It's quite difficult to know if there's a good reason for a
| prohibition, vs whether it's just there to protect somebody's
| monopoly.
|
| In a healthier society there'd be a smooth gradient between the
| layman and the professional such that B.S. prohibitions would
| be identified and removed by informed subsets of the
| population. But instead we have this very crisp boundary
| between the in-the-know and the clueless, and to be in-the-know
| is so expensive that one can't afford to be in-the-know while
| also _not_ being on somebody 's payroll--those tend to be the
| same somebody's who have a monopoly to protect, so the clueless
| stay clueless and the capable stay under control.
|
| There's a lot of criticism in adjacent threads for these guys
| having cherry-picked the easy examples, but given the
| circumstances I think that that's precisely what we ought to be
| doing: Identify the cases where taking control of your drugs is
| relatively easy, teach people to do it, and level up gradually
| until that set of cases starts growing.
|
| We may never get to the point where we're making _everything_
| at home, but if we don 't at least take a shot at the easy ones
| then we'll never know where the reasonable equilibrium point
| lies (i.e. the point beyond which you should leave it to a
| corporation). As it stands we're letting that point be decided
| by people who have a conflict of interest in doing so.
| sergioisidoro wrote:
| "Everyone can do sterile work", I mean some people can't even
| boil an egg.
|
| There is a big sample bias here. The community of hackers is
| generally intelligent and curious. The laws in place were not
| necessarily made with them in mind, but for people who will take
| homeopathic remedies, use energy crystals.
|
| Maybe if you're smart enough to avoid detection and navigate the
| legal hurdles, that is the acid test (heh) for the competences
| and diligence these things require...
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